Shaken, not stirred

Getting attached is bad—bad, Bad, BAD.

At least it is when you have a pantsing partner who lives to shake things up. Things that maybe you thought should only have been stirred.

“Pantsing” always makes me think of a basketball court and a skinny kid with his shorts around his ankles. That’s neither here nor there, but now I have a (not-so) lovely mental image that I’m stuck with for a while.

          Or maybe that’s how I felt and it IS actually here and there. Maybe I’d felt exposed for the incompetent pantster I truly am. A pantster can’t plan and I’m a planner.

          So here’s what happened: I’d introduced a character and had a vision of him being a certain way. Larry on the other hand, had a RADICALLY different idea, which left me miffed. How DARE he mess with my vision! (mutter mutter mumble) The NERVE.

          Oh, wait. I forgot. Pantsing precludes planning. (Say that three times fast.) No plotting ahead and trying to guide the partner, and no creating the characters, because with pantsing they create themselves.

          Dammit.

          So now I have to re-envision the character as being what he has become, not what I thought he should or would be.

          What goes around comes around—in the last book Larry’d written a character that I had changed fairly dramatically by the end of the story. So now it’s my turn. I suppose I had it coming.

          But the lesson here is far less Karma-ish than I’m making it out to be. It’s about me and my control freakiness and my need to over-think everything.

          “Just have fun with it,” Larry says. Well, for me fun is being freaky, in only the most controlling and writerly of ways, of course.

          Today it’s my turn to write a scene. I will be obliged to include this character and his less than charming ways, unless I do something dreadful and dastardly. Like give him a split personality.

          So for today, this is Freaky Control Freak, signing off.